Night Watch

One morning at work my co-workers and I chatted about the weekend before the day’s business began.

            “Did you see Saturday Night Live this weekend?” asked Shawn. “That political parody was hilarious.”

            “I’m no night owl. I’m an early bird,” responded Teresa. “Saturday and Sunday I started the day with a walk at sunrise."
             "So what are you?” Teresa and Shawn looked at me expectantly, “A night owl or an early bird?”

            Actually, I’m neither. I have a tedious physical condition which causes chronic pain. As a friend with rheumatoid arthritis remarked quite accurately, “The problem with chronic pain is not, ironically, that it hurts. It’s that it wears you out.”

            So I’m tired. Ideally, I could sleep nine hours a night. Realistically, I hope for seven or eight. But here’s what my nights are like.

            At about nine p.m. I take a long, hot bath to ease my aching muscles. Chloe sits nervously on the bathmat by the tub. She finds it deeply disturbing that I would immerse myself in liquid. I towel off and crawl into bed, fluffing the pillows and grabbing a news magazine. I plan to read a little before I fall asleep.

            I stretch out on my back with a sigh. Just as I start the first article, Chloe leaps onto my chest, her head facing my toes. She kneads and purrs luxuriously. I try to adjust my reading angle, twisting this way and that, trying to focus on the page and avoid the big, furry butt creeping closer to my face. After several unsuccessful attempts to peruse the text, I put the magazine aside and turn off the bedside lamp. What the heck, I need the rest!

            The steady hum of Chloe’s purr lulls me to sleep. After an hour or so she jumps off my chest with a cheerful meow.  “Don’t worry,” she seems to say, “I have to go but I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, Annie will protect you.”

            Annie jumps into my chest. Her razor sharp claws dig in just beneath my collar bones. “Don’t worry,” she seems to say, butting her head into the space between my jaw and my chest. “I’ll protect you. When I have to leave, Chloe will be back.” Annie purrs softly into my throat as I drift back off to sleep.

            I wake up a few hours later with the sound of Annie crunching kibble and thumping down the stairs. Chloe jumps back onto the bed, stretching sideways on the mattress, leaving me about ten inches on the far side of the bed. Hanging precariously onto the edge, I fall asleep, awakened by an odd sensation. Chloe, purring and kneading the blanket intently, is trying to insert her tail into my mouth.

            It’s 4:30 in the morning. I give up on sleep. I fluff the pillows again, sit up and open the magazine. I might as well read. Annie and Chloe are at my feet, each on one corner of the mattress. They sit like little sentries, facing the bedroom door, alert for intruders.  At 5:30, I put the magazine aside, turn off the lamp, and close my eyes for one hour until the alarm clock awakens me for the day. I stumble, bleary-eyed, to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face.

            The cats jump reluctantly off the bed while I straighten the quilt. They leap back onto the mattress, sighing and stretching before curling into cozy balls of fur. I pet each one gently. Each opens one eye, just a slit. “Go to work,” they seem to say, “and leave us in peace. Last night was strenuous and we’re on guard tomorrow night as well. We need to get our rest so we can take good care of you.”

            I tiptoe downstairs and, yawning, brew a cup of coffee before heading off to work.

           

The Proverbial Feline, #1

When Chloe first arrived to live with me, she had a terrible skin disease which covered her with bloody scabs. In addition to consulting with my regular vet who prescribed an antibiotic cream that Chloe would have no part of, rushing to hide under the bed if she caught sight of the spray bottle, I also consulted with anther veterinarian friend. She said, “A good diet and a stress-free life will go a long way toward a cure. Cats have a remarkable ability to recover from almost any illness. They are practically indestructible. They have nine lives, you know.”

            Within a month, Chloe was cured. The scar on her back, the only reminder she was ever a miserable, bloody fur ball, is covered by her long hair. But that incident got me thinking about proverbs which feature cats, especially those proverbs I’ve known all my life, and how they explain cats, me and life in general.

            When I think about that cat with nine lives, I am reminded of the feral cat that lives where I work, a pretty grey tabby. She stays far away from humans. She’s painfully thin. When I arrive at work early in the morning before the others have arrived, I see her skulking through the few brushy spots that border the parking lot near my office building. She must be searching for rodents, birds and insects to eat. I can’t help but compare her life, a constant struggle for existence, to the life Chloe and Annie enjoy: unlimited water and kibble, a warm, cozy bed where they can lounge all day, a human caretaker who greets their approaches with cat treats and affectionate caresses.

            I compare myself with my friend Jane, especially during her last, difficult years. At the end of the month when her disability check was exhausted, she went hungry. She spent time in a homeless shelter near Port Authority that required her to stay on the streets from early in the morning until dinner time. In the interim, during the winter months, she walked New York City’s frigid, windy streets, wrapped in a motley assortment of jackets, blankets, scarves and quilts I sent her. They were regularly stolen by other shelter inhabitants or else she would lose them during her travels.

            For those few, difficult months, Jane was a feral creature, eager to live at any cost so she could save her daughter, her husband and her father the pain of her death. A deeply faithful Christian, she was convinced her life – a life plagued by mental illness and poverty – was part of a divine plan. She prayed daily for the wisdom to understand her plight and the strength to endure it.

            I’m a non-theistic Quaker. I don’t believe in a personal god. I’m not counting on an after life. I have a comfortable existence, a pleasant home, a job I love, a broad circle of friends, a small but close family, sufficient financial resources and two bad cats. Do I want nine lives? One is sufficient, especially the one I have now. While I write, sitting in the upstairs study, Annie eats some kibble at the feeding station in the hallway and enters the room. She rubs against my ankles; then looks at me, meowing insistently.

            “OK,” I say, “Up you go!” I put my notebook on the end table by my cup of steaming tea. Annie jumps into my lap. I scratch her behind the ears. She stretches and purrs contentedly before curling into a ball. I watch her tiny ribcage rise and fall in perfect rhythm with my breath.

            Why would I want nine lives? I ask myself. This moment contains all I desire.

The Gressions

When I come home from work, Chloe is in the window, waving frantically and meowing. I enter the house and she jumps into my arms, burrowing her head into the crook of my neck. Annie saunters into the room and rubs against my ankles, purring loudly.  Chloe, the little drama queen, is as emotional as a furry Edith Piaf. “Mon Dieu! Annie is un diable! She roars at me! She bares her claws!  Sacré bleu! I am desolée!”

             Annie looks up at us, a deceptively sweet smile plays on her little kitty lips. “Just wait, ma chère,” she seems to say to Chloe.  “Just you wait. Your protector is here now, but she’ll go back outside sooner or later. She’ll leave you alone, unguarded, sans protection. And then you’ll be mine, all mine to torment.”

            Annie trips blithely upstairs. Chloe jumps from my arms. She flops onto her back and I rub her belly. I start upstairs, Chloe at my heels. She runs happily ahead of me, then stops cold on the landing. Annie crouches in the upstairs hall, barring Chloe’s passage. I don’t know how tiny Annie has the power to intimidate Chloe, who is twice her size,  with a glance, but she does. Poor Chloe slinks back downstairs.

            “Why do you threaten poor Chloe?” I ask Annie who is now sitting beside me on the bed while I change out of my work clothes. “What is your problem with aggression?”

            “A gression?” Annie looks at me arrogantly. “I have several gressions, many, many gressions. They’re my fondest possessions. I will never give them up. And I keep them with my other treasures under your bed.”

            Maybe the power differential is explained by the fact that Chloe has been declawed while Annie still has her talons. She uses them against Chloe to great effect, swiping her savagely at every opportunity. Sometimes I’ll come home to find Chloe hiding behind the sofa, huge clumps of her hair on the carpet.

            I go back downstairs to cook dinner. Chloe looks at me imploring, twining around my legs and considering her prospects. “May I have a pearl handled derringer for Christmas, please? Just a feminine, dainty, single-shot model. It would even the playing field.”

            “No, Chloe! We try to be peaceful creatures in this house. Even if we don’t succeed," I say, looking at Annie who is peering around the kitchen door, growling softly. "For heaven’s sake, I’m a Quaker! A derringer could be fatal.”

            “I wouldn’t kill her; I’d just wing her.” She looks at me hopefully.

            My friend Ed suggested that I offer to buy Chloe a Taser gun. “So she could stun Annie,” he suggested helpfully. “It’s not lethal, but it’s effective.”

            Still, I hope for a weapon-free solution. When Annie unleashes her gressions savagely, I stand between her and Chloe, hoping the situation will defuse. Fat chance!

            Cats are the queens of displaced aggression. They see a threat outside the window and react by attacking a catnip toy indoors. I protect Chloe from her foe by warning Annie sternly, “No gressions!” while standing between the two. After Annie leaves the room, Chloe thanks me with an angry hiss and a swat of her declawed paws before raising her tail like a battle flag and prancing to her window perch where she sits looking outside and ignoring me pointedly, a portrait in disdain.

            There aren’t many Quaker artists. Quakers disparaged the arts as frippery until the twentieth century, but one early American Quaker artist, Edward Hicks, painted over sixty versions of The Peaceable Kingdom based on Isaiah 11:6, “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” It’s a lovely scene. The naivety of the artist’s vision mirrors his naïve hope for a peaceful world, a world without two bad cats.  I prefer the nuanced words of Quaker Pamela Umbima. As George Fox, the founder of Quakerism would say, they speak to my (and Chloe’s and Annie’s) condition:

"This is a marvelous world, full of beauty and splendor; it is also an unrelenting and savage world, and we are not the only living things prone to dominate if given the chance. . . We have no reason to be either arrogant or complacent: one look at the stars or through a microscope is sufficient to quell such notions. But we have to accept our positon in the world with as much responsibility and fortitude as we can muster, and try to grow up to our measure of love in this tangle of prospects and torments.”

Quaker Faith and Practice, Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers in Britain). Warwick, England, 1995, 25:08.

Litter Wary Critic

I have a weak stomach. I can take the sight and smell of blood, but other bodily effusions make me gag. I am not good around babies with spit-up and dirty diapers. Before I got Chloe, I worried about my ability to clean a litter box without getting sick. I managed by buying “clumping” litter, rushing into the bathroom, holding my nose and encasing the noxious clumps in a plastic bag which I tied tightly before throwing it in the trash can outside the house.

For the first month I had Chloe, she dutifully used the litter box. One day I came downstairs to find a fresh fecal deposit on the oriental rug in the dining room.

“Oh crap!” (And I meant that both literally and figuratively). As soon as I cleaned up and sprayed room freshener liberally, I rushed to computer to google litter box problems. I discovered there is a whole cottage industry devoted to the non-litter-box compliant cat. Ominously, there was a lot to read.

The articles encouraged me to see my vet to rule out physical causes, so Chloe and I made an appointment.

“There’s nothing physically wrong with your cat,” the vet said “Let me recommend the services of a veterinary behavior specialist. Fill out this detailed questionnaire, make an appointment with the specialist – here’s her card – and perhaps you can get to the root of Chloe’s problem.

My friend Jane had been a lifelong consumer of mental health services, so I knew a thing or two about psycho-therapy. I imagined Chloe reclining on a tiny couch, telling a feline psychologist about her relationship with her mother or her conflicts with Annie while I sat in the waiting room for fifty minutes, reading back issues of Cat Fancy magazine.  I was wrong. The behavioral specialist put together a complicated regime for me. I had to bar Chloe’s passage to the dining room except when I was present. I cleaned litter boxes twice a day and experimented with litters of different scents and textures and boxes made from different materials, moving the boxes to alternative spots and logging a daily journal of Chloe’s bathroom activities. It was driving us all crazy. I hate keeping records and was forced to spend my free time logging Chloe’s every move while lugging litter boxes around the house. Chloe was suspicious of this person who followed her everywhere, notebook in one hand, litter scoop in the other. And Annie, jealous of all the attention Chloe was getting, started pooping outside her litter box as well, to get a piece of the action.

“I‘d rather live with crap on the carpet than become a fecal policeman,” I complained to a friend.

“This is kind of weird,” she responded, “but I know somebody who had a dog with issues. He found a pet psychic who was able to – you know- read the dog. The psychic told him exactly what the problem was and how to deal with it. He swears it changed the dog’s behavior entirely.

“That’s just crazy,” I scoffed.

“No crazier than a friend I know who paid a hundred dollars for her cat to see a kitty shrink,” my friend laughed. “A phone appointment with the psychic is only forty bucks.”

I held Chloe on my lap so the pet phone psychic could catch her “vibrations.”  She told me Chloe had lived in the county and other information I couldn’t verify. Then I asked about the litter box issue. “Why won’t Chloe use the litter box and what can I do about that?”

There was a pause.  “Chloe just doesn’t like using the box,” she said. “She likes the freedom of using the carpet, not to mention the paw feel of the soft carpet pile compared to the sandy feel of litter.” Another pause. “I’m not sure you can do much about it.”

This was clearly neither a physical complaint nor a psychological problem. This was a lifestyle choice. Chloe was a committed free-ranger, preferring to think outside the box. I refused to give in. I moved a litter box into the dining room, putting it on the carpet in the corner spot Chloe preferred for bathroom activities, not noticing that it was directly below a damp patch forming in the ceiling plaster. (I was soon to discover a leak in a radiator pipe in the ceiling). I combed reviews of kitty litter and found a “cat attractant” litter I purchased on line.

When I filled the box with cat attractant litter (a combination of litter and herbs), Chloe expressed interest.  She sniffed the box, looked at it  thoughtfully and sniffed some more. After careful consideration, she backed into the litter box gingerly. At that moment, a piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, smacking her on the head.

She jumped out of the box indignantly, completing her business on the dining room carpet as far away from the litter box as she could get. She refused to step into that corner of the  dining room at all, and I can’t say I could blame her. I was pretty upset myself.

A few days later I discovered a crack in the litter box in the bathroom, the one Annie uses for all her bathroom activities and Chloe uses for urination only. The litter was leaking onto the floor.  I went down to the dining room and got the unused box, cleaning it with bleach and water, putting it in the front yard so the sun could complete disinfection before filling it with fresh litter and placing it in the bathroom. Chloe entered the bathroom and stopped short. She looked at the box and then at me with alarm.

“What’s the matter, Chloe? The old box broke, so here’s a new one, nice and clean and tidy.” She stared at me and the box again. Clearly, her message wasn’t getting through. Deliberately, she looked first at me, then the box, the ceiling and the box again. I got the message. This was the litter box of death. If she used it, boulders would rain from the sky. No way was she using that box.

I went to the basement and got a spare litter box which I filled with fresh litter for the bathroom. I took the box of death and accompanied by Chloe, carried it downstairs and placed it ceremoniously in the trash can outside. When I reentered the house, Chloe looked relieved.  Thanks to her quick thinking, she had saved us all from certain death. She sighed contentedly and crapped on the oriental rug.